In a word? Boring. That’s how I can describe the Faint’s Fasciinatiion. Unfortunately, you avid readers probably crave a bit more critical analysis then that, so I will have to indulge you. So, just how boring and flat is Fasciination? Very. Imagine drinking only water for four days and four nights - it’s tastelessness and ability to pass straight through you heightening with every passing hour. Now you’ve got an idea of what it’s like listening to this album.

All of the extra letter I’s in the world couldn’t save Fasciinatiion from a whimpering and pathetic destruction. The Faint’s infuriatingly stiff distorted bass and bleated synthesizer taps make a full return, and when you listen to lead singer Todd Fink’s weary vocals, you’ll wonder why he didn’t find a career in late-night talk radio instead. Oh, wait. I know why - it’s because the lyrics are just as insipid as the music aesthetic. “Sell us magazines about the stars/And watch us stare into the void/What not to wear to the awards..” groans Fink on “Get Seduced”. I suppose we’re to think this is an obvious but scathing criticism of the mass consumption of celebrity culture in our times - too bad the flaccid electronic stabs and Fink’s exasperated sighs are the only things backing up such lazily preached words. On “Ghost in the Machine” Fink squirms himself through a vocoder, singing “There’s no ghost in the machine/I make my own mistakes/We seem like skeletons with bonehead beliefs..” - dear lord, is this man serious? It feels like Fink pulled out his old poetry journal from the middle of high school and thought to himself, “you know, I think my sixteen year old abstract self really had something going there…”. He was wrong.

The whole of Fasciinatiion - lyrically, musically and structurally - just comes out as one big clumsy attempt to marry watered-down kitsch with messy, uninspired electronic pop. If you’re looking for dynamic new wave, then look elsewhere - the Faint aren’t even close to the excitement and intrinsic parody that the original new wave movement came to represent, and in turn some of it’s followers were able to harness that energy for their own purposes as well. Fasciinatiion is just dull. Avoid this crashing bore of an album at all costs.

Michael Tenzer